Friday, February 18, 2011,

“Gender Justice and Indian Sovereignty: Native American Women and the Law.”

This one-day conference will be held at TJSL’s brand-new state-of-the-art building in downtown San Diego (opening January 2011, our first major event there), and will feature the annual Ruth Bader Ginsburg Lecture (founded in 2003 with generous support from Justice Ginsburg), by our Keynote Speaker, Interim Associate Dean Stacy Leeds, University of Kansas School of Law, former Justice of the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court and currently chief judge of three Indian Nation tribal courts. Her Lecture will be titled: “Resistance, Resilience, and Reconciliation: Reflections on Native American Women and the Law.”

Information and a registration link may be found at http://www.tjsl.edu/wlc2011 (a very attractive conference rate, $138 plus tax per night, is available for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights, Feb 17-19, for a limited block of rooms at The Handlery, a San Diego resort hotel a couple of miles from the school; suitable closer hotels were unfortunately booked up by conventions; we plan to provide a free shuttle bus to/from The Handlery and the law school).

Leeds will join a remarkable national assemblage of about two dozen speakers, including numerous American Indian women leaders from across California and the United States, and one Canadian First Nations attorney, along with two Native men and two non-Native women, all deeply experienced leaders of Indian Nation Tribal courts, governments, business, law practice, and academia.

In keeping with TJSL’s Women and the Law Project traditions, the conference seeks to combine nationally known speakers with strong local community involvement, reflected this year in several speakers who are leaders in San Diego County and Southern California Indian Nation communities.

The speakers will include 11 serving judges on the courts of more than a dozen Indian Nations, two Native women who are current or former state court judges, the first and only Indian woman to serve as U.S. Attorney, and most of the dozen or so Native women on the faculties of American law schools. They will address a wide range of issues affecting American Indian women, including gender-related violence and Indian Country law enforcement, development of Tribal courts, governments, and businesses, and the intersection of Native identity, civil rights, sexism, and racism.

It has been very difficult to choose from among the large array of extremely qualified potential speakers, while staying within the logistical limits of a one-day conference; a few additional invited speakers are still pending confirmation. We hope as many of you as possible may be able to attend.

The full list of speakers confirmed so far is below. More details with a conference schedule and full array of planned panels will be circulated later.

Best regards,Bryan H. WildenthalProfessor of LawThomas Jefferson School of LawFaculty Organizer for WLC 2011

LIST OF CONFIRMED SPEAKERS

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